Re: [Wikimedia-l] Books & Bytes – Issue 23, June – July 2017

[UY Scuti]

Books & Bytes is the bi-monthly newsletter of The Wikipedia Library,
focusing on recent, ongoing and upcoming activities and events in TWL and
relevant topic areas. Read our previous newsletters here
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*Books & Bytes – Issue 24, August – September 2017*Highlights:

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   - Spotlight: Wiki Loves Archives
   - Bytes in brief

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Erik Moeller]

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 12:51 AM, James Salsman  wrote:
> Erik,
>
> Should interactive web, internet of things, or offline services
> relying on Foundation encyclopedia CC-BY-SA content be required to
> attribute authorship by specifying the revision date from which the
> transluded content is derived?

James -

I don't think there's a sufficiently strong justification for
modifying the manner of attribution specified in the "Terms of Use",
which in any case would only apply to re-use of future revisions of
CC-BY-SA/CC-BY content that's not also exempted by "fair use".

As a best practice, I do believe including timestamp or version
information is helpful both for re-users themselves and for end users.
[[Progressive disclosure]] keeps such information manageable. In my
own re-use of CC-0 data from Wikidata, Open Library and similar
sources, I do include timestamp information along with the source.
Example re-use from Wikidata:
https://lib.reviews/static/uploads/last-sync.png

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Andreas Kolbe]

Hi Katherine,


On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 6:13 PM, Katherine Maher 
wrote:

> 2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller :
> >
> > With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
> > worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you
> > at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the
> > ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the
> > "essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components
> > maintained by different groups).
>
> There is indeed an element of aspiration in that phrase. I knew it would be
> controversial, and we talked about it quite a bit in drafting, but
> advocated that we include it anyway. After all, our vision statement is "a
> world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all
> knowledge." That's certainly inclusive (it has no single parties or
> ownership) but it is also wildly aspirational. But despite the
> impossibility of our that aspiration, it has worked quite well: we've made
> great strides toward a project that is "impossible in theory".
>


Indeed, Wikipedia has become more influential than anyone thought likely
ten years ago.



> For each person who felt we should moderate the language of the direction,
> there was another who wanted us to be more bold and recapture this
> ambition. They wanted us to believe in ourselves, and give the world
> something to believe in. As Wikimedians, we tend to prefer matter-of-fact,
> sometimes plain and noncommittal statements. While that works well for NPOV
> content, a strategic direction also seeks to inspire ambitious efforts. The
> drafting group removed much of the flowery language from the earlier
> versions of the draft, but the goal was to keep just enough to inspire
> movement actors and external partners.



I understand the psychology of stretch goals, but I'd still say that some
goals are not worth aspiring towards.

It's in the nature of the human mind to be vulnerable to ambitions for
world domination. That vulnerability is well encapsulated in the jocular
saying "Power corrupts, but absolute power is kinda cool."

Ultimately, whenever idealists have achieved such absolute domination, the
systems they established were eventually used to some ends that were
anything but cool. Checks and balances are key to a healthy system.

Best,
Andreas
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Andreas Kolbe]

Hi Erik,

More good points here.


On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:01 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:

>
> With regard to the issue of citations, it's worth noting that it's
> already possible to _conditionally_ load data from Wikidata, excluding
> information that is unsourced or only sourced circularly (i.e. to
> Wikipedia itself). [1] Template invocations can also override values
> provided by Wikidata, for example, if there is a source, but it is not
> considered reliable by the standards of a specific project.
>


That is useful.



> > If a digital voice assistant propagates a Wikimedia mistake without
> telling
> > users where it got its information from, then there is not even a
> feedback
> > form. Editability is of no help at all if people can't find the source.
>
> I'm in favor of always indicating at least provenance (something like
> "Here's a quote from Wikipedia:"), even for short excerpts, and I
> certainly think WMF and chapters can advocate for this practice.
> However, where short excerpts are concerned, it's not at all clear
> that there is a _legal_ issue here, and that full compliance with all
> requirements of the license is a reasonable "ask".
>


I think it would be good to do some legal work to gain that clarity. The
Amazon Echo issue, with the Echo potentially using millions of words from
Wikipedia without any kind of attribution and indication of provenance at
all, was raised on this list in July for example.

We were promised an update here on this list months ago, but no such update
has come to date. If CC-BY-SA is not enforced, Wikipedia will stealthily
shift to CC-0 in practice. I don't think that's desirable.



> Bing's search result page manages a decent compromise, I think: it
> shows excerpts from Wikipedia clearly labeled as such, and it links to
> the CC-BY-SA license if you expand the excerpt, e.g.:
> https://www.bing.com/search?q=france



I agree: Bing's solution is excellent. It provides attribution and
indicates provenance, in a manner that is reasonable based on the medium,
means and context in which the licensed material is shared, which is
literally all the licence requires.



> I know that over the years, many efforts have been undertaken to
> document best practices for re-use, ranging from local
> community-created pages to chapter guides and tools like the
> "Lizenzhinweisgenerator". I don't know what the best-available of
> these is nowadays, but if none exists, it might be a good idea to
> develop a new, comprehensive guide that takes into account voice
> applications, tabular data, and so on.
>
> Such a guide would ideally not just be written from a license
> compliance perspective, but also include recommendations, e.g., on how
> to best indicate provenance, distinguishing "here's what you must do"
> from "here's what we recommend".
>


Agreed. Ideally this should be complemented by a public list indicating
which providers are following the recommendations.



> There is an important distinction between "lookup" and "learning"; the
> former is a transactional activity ("Is this country part of the Euro
> zone?") and the latter an immersive one ("How did the EU come
> about?"). Where we now get instant answers from home assistants or
> search engines, we may have previously skimmed, or performed our own
> highly optimized search in the local knowledge repository called a
> "bookshelf".
>


An interesting question to me is whether, with the explosion of information
available, people will spend so much time with transactional queries across
a large number of diverse topics that there is little time left for
immersive, in-depth learning of any one of them, and how that might
gradually change the type of knowledge people possess (information
overload).

Even today, political commentators are deploring that people are making
decisions on the basis of gut reactions and snippets – isolated bits of
information that have an emotional hook, but are stripped of wider context.
There seems to be fairly wide agreement that there is at least a potential
for negative consequences, as well as positive ones.

The growth in digital assistants could conceivably have a large impact
here, because a digital assistant can only answer the questions people ask
– and sometimes more background knowledge is needed to actually know what
questions to ask.

All of these effects are hard to predict, but it seems safe to say that, as
with any other structural change of this sort, there will be upsides and
downsides.



> In other words, even if some instant answers lead to a drop in
> Wikipedia views, it would be unreasonable to assume that those views
> were "reads" rather than "skims". When you're on a purely
> transactional journey, you appreciate almost anything that shortens
> it.
>


Absolutely true, and judging by myself – most of my own journeys on
Wikipedia.org are transactional – the number of page views corresponding to
someone actually reading a Wikipedia article from beginning to end i

Re: [Wikimedia-l] October 12: Strategy update - Movement direction now posted for your endorsement consideration (#26)

[Nicole Ebber]

Hi Ziko,

Quick response regarding the endorsement: We will ask people to only
endorse the strategic direction in the green box and the short section
underneath with the next steps.

Hope that helps.

Best regards,
Nicole

On 21 October 2017 at 01:02, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:

> 2017-10-20 23:10 GMT+02:00 Katherine Maher :
>
> >
> > I am optimistic that this strategic direction provides every individual
> and
> > entity within the Wikimedia movement something to be excited about.
> >
>
> Hello, it is not about what I might be excited about - I wonder in which
> ways the document will be used in a way I find problematic for the
> community.
>
> I am still curious about the links in the "See also" section:
>
>- Appendix
> movement/2017/Direction/Appendix>:
>More information about the process, research, and findings that led to
> this
>outcome.
>- A report of findings
> movement/2017/Findings>
>is being written and many references on this page will be updated to
> point
>to its content.
>
> Are those (and the footnotes) part of the "direction" document? Will people
> who endorse the document also endorse them?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Ziko
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Beginning on October 26, we will be asking for individual contributors
> and
> > organized groups to endorse this new strategic direction for our
> movement.
> > I encourage you to spend the intervening days discussing this direction
> and
> > determining if you and/or your group will be endorsing it. You will find
> > more information about the endorsement day and the process on the
> > direction’s meta page next week.
> >
> > The endorsement concludes phase 1 of the process, and we are currently
> > drafting the next steps of the process. The main goal of phase 2 will be
> to
> > answer the question "How do we implement the strategic direction", which
> > means identifying the resources needed for execution, and the activities
> it
> > involves. A first rough overview of this phase is being developed on
> Meta.
> > Take a look! [2]
> >
> > On a different note, we have completed the move into our new office space
> > at One Montgomery Tower![3] Once again, thank you to everyone on staff
> who
> > was involved in making the move so seamless, and to all of you for your
> > patience over the past couple of weeks. Later this month, once we are
> more
> > settled in, we will be sharing photos and information about our new space
> > on the Wikimedia Blog.
> >
> > Stay tuned!
> >
> > መልካም ቀን። (Amharic translation: “Have a nice day”),
> >
> > Katherine
> >
> > [1]
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_
> > movement/2017/People/Drafting_Group
> > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_2030/Process_planning
> > [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_headquarters
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> ___
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> 




-- 
Nicole Ebber
Adviser International Relations
Movement Strategy Track Lead: Organized Groups

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] October 12: Strategy update - Movement direction now posted for your endorsement consideration (#26)

[Ziko van Dijk]

2017-10-20 23:10 GMT+02:00 Katherine Maher :

>
> I am optimistic that this strategic direction provides every individual and
> entity within the Wikimedia movement something to be excited about.
>

Hello, it is not about what I might be excited about - I wonder in which
ways the document will be used in a way I find problematic for the
community.

I am still curious about the links in the "See also" section:

   - Appendix
   
:
   More information about the process, research, and findings that led to this
   outcome.
   - A report of findings
   
   is being written and many references on this page will be updated to point
   to its content.

Are those (and the footnotes) part of the "direction" document? Will people
who endorse the document also endorse them?

Kind regards,

Ziko










> Beginning on October 26, we will be asking for individual contributors and
> organized groups to endorse this new strategic direction for our movement.
> I encourage you to spend the intervening days discussing this direction and
> determining if you and/or your group will be endorsing it. You will find
> more information about the endorsement day and the process on the
> direction’s meta page next week.
>
> The endorsement concludes phase 1 of the process, and we are currently
> drafting the next steps of the process. The main goal of phase 2 will be to
> answer the question "How do we implement the strategic direction", which
> means identifying the resources needed for execution, and the activities it
> involves. A first rough overview of this phase is being developed on Meta.
> Take a look! [2]
>
> On a different note, we have completed the move into our new office space
> at One Montgomery Tower![3] Once again, thank you to everyone on staff who
> was involved in making the move so seamless, and to all of you for your
> patience over the past couple of weeks. Later this month, once we are more
> settled in, we will be sharing photos and information about our new space
> on the Wikimedia Blog.
>
> Stay tuned!
>
> መልካም ቀን። (Amharic translation: “Have a nice day”),
>
> Katherine
>
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_
> movement/2017/People/Drafting_Group
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_2030/Process_planning
> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_headquarters
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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[Wikimedia-l] October 12: Strategy update - Movement direction now posted for your endorsement consideration (#26)

[Katherine Maher]

Hi all,

I’m delighted to share that a final version of the Wikimedia movement's new
strategic direction has been posted on Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/?curid=10422143

The drafting group[1] bravely spent several weeks reading, considering, and
(when possible) responding to the comments posted about the previous
drafts. Attempting to capture and synthesize the aspirations and opinions
of a global movement based on hundreds of offline and online conversations
is no easy task. Please join me in thanking them not only for taking on
this formidable process, but for helping develop something I believe we can
all be proud of.

I am optimistic that this strategic direction provides every individual and
entity within the Wikimedia movement something to be excited about.
Beginning on October 26, we will be asking for individual contributors and
organized groups to endorse this new strategic direction for our movement.
I encourage you to spend the intervening days discussing this direction and
determining if you and/or your group will be endorsing it. You will find
more information about the endorsement day and the process on the
direction’s meta page next week.

The endorsement concludes phase 1 of the process, and we are currently
drafting the next steps of the process. The main goal of phase 2 will be to
answer the question "How do we implement the strategic direction", which
means identifying the resources needed for execution, and the activities it
involves. A first rough overview of this phase is being developed on Meta.
Take a look! [2]

On a different note, we have completed the move into our new office space
at One Montgomery Tower![3] Once again, thank you to everyone on staff who
was involved in making the move so seamless, and to all of you for your
patience over the past couple of weeks. Later this month, once we are more
settled in, we will be sharing photos and information about our new space
on the Wikimedia Blog.

Stay tuned!

መልካም ቀን። (Amharic translation: “Have a nice day”),

Katherine

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/People/Drafting_Group
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_2030/Process_planning
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_headquarters
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Peter Southwood]

I feel much the same as Lodewijk, though it is possible that we differ in 
detail. As he says the document is rather vague and open to divergent 
interpretation after the fact. 
Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Lodewijk
Sent: Friday, 20 October 2017 7:51 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of 
movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

Thanks for the response, Katherine. I'm a little concerned that we can have 
such "vastly different" interpretations of the same text. I tried to get some 
Wikimedians to give me their take-away, and have not gotten a consistent 
direction from those.

What I mostly remember after reading your response is that Wikimedia would be 
doing more of the same, and more.

This is a two-folded concern for me. On one hand, it feels like the direction 
is too multi-interpretable. While vagueness and leaving specifics open is only 
natural, I do believe that a clear direction is essential to take the next 
steps.

Second, after reading your response I'm left with the feeling that we don't 
really take a direction. Choosing a direction is also determining what not to 
do. This was also a main criticism of the earlier version presented at 
Wikimania. Directions are painful, because we're not satisfying everyone.

Currently, the WMF is asking people and affiliates to 'endorse' this text.
It has a high textual quality and says a number of things that resonate with my 
ideals and those that I know to be Wikimedia's ideals. However, I don't feel it 
provides the direction we need yet. I'm not keen on endorsing a direction, 
which may then be interpreted in a vastly different way.

I should also note: I have little hope of changing the process. And it may very 
well be that I'm alone in this concern. But I would suggest that you
(plural) select 25 (or more) random Wikimedians that were not intimately 
involved with the strategic process, let them read the direction, and let them 
summarize their take-aways. (that is working from the assumption you have not 
done so already) If their variance is too large, that may be an indicator that 
unfortunately another cycle of labor may be needed before we can enter the next 
round. Given all effort and resources that have been invested in this process, 
such sanity check may be worth while.

Warmly,

Lodewijk

ps: just to state the obvious: I'm highly appreciative of all the work that 
went into this. It could have turned out worse in many many ways, and I 
appreciate all the efforts that went into involving the community. I'm always 
feeling guilty about not having been able to spend way more time on the 
strategic process than I did in all the various steps of the process - such 
rebut would be totally fair :).

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Katherine Maher 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and 
> while I haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work 
> has been continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into 
> Phase 2, in which our objective is to start thinking about how we make 
> the strategic direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's 
> an opportunity to create greater clarity about how we each understand 
> the direction, how we might set goals against it, what we may need to 
> change to achieve these goals, and how we can contribute -- as 
> projects, communities, and individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly 
> update shortly but I wanted to acknowledge the contributions in this thread 
> first.
>
> I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed, 
> agreed again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have 
> to scrap my drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I 
> dig the challenges you all have put forward and appreciate the 
> diversity of opinions. Some of our differences stem from the unique 
> contexts of the groups and individuals responding and will result in 
> differences in implementation in each community. Other differences, 
> such as questioning the very concept of source credibility, will 
> certainly require additional discussion. But regardless of where we 
> end up, it has been a delight to follow such a rich, substantive 
> conversation. This has been one of the best, and most 
> thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I 
> hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement 
> strategy process.
>
> A few more responses inline:
>
> 2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk :
> >
> > I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards, 
> > there
> is
> > too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I 
> > take away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of 
> > the free knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a 
> > s

Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Yaroslav Blanter]

Hello Lodewijk,

no, you are certainly not alone in your concerns. It looks like at this
stage there is little we can do, and the only option left is to not endorse
the document.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 7:51 PM, Lodewijk 
wrote:

> Thanks for the response, Katherine. I'm a little concerned that we can have
> such "vastly different" interpretations of the same text. I tried to get
> some Wikimedians to give me their take-away, and have not gotten a
> consistent direction from those.
>
> What I mostly remember after reading your response is that Wikimedia would
> be doing more of the same, and more.
>
> This is a two-folded concern for me. On one hand, it feels like the
> direction is too multi-interpretable. While vagueness and leaving specifics
> open is only natural, I do believe that a clear direction is essential to
> take the next steps.
>
> Second, after reading your response I'm left with the feeling that we don't
> really take a direction. Choosing a direction is also determining what not
> to do. This was also a main criticism of the earlier version presented at
> Wikimania. Directions are painful, because we're not satisfying everyone.
>
> Currently, the WMF is asking people and affiliates to 'endorse' this text.
> It has a high textual quality and says a number of things that resonate
> with my ideals and those that I know to be Wikimedia's ideals. However, I
> don't feel it provides the direction we need yet. I'm not keen on endorsing
> a direction, which may then be interpreted in a vastly different way.
>
> I should also note: I have little hope of changing the process. And it may
> very well be that I'm alone in this concern. But I would suggest that you
> (plural) select 25 (or more) random Wikimedians that were not intimately
> involved with the strategic process, let them read the direction, and let
> them summarize their take-aways. (that is working from the assumption you
> have not done so already) If their variance is too large, that may be an
> indicator that unfortunately another cycle of labor may be needed before we
> can enter the next round. Given all effort and resources that have been
> invested in this process, such sanity check may be worth while.
>
> Warmly,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> ps: just to state the obvious: I'm highly appreciative of all the work that
> went into this. It could have turned out worse in many many ways, and I
> appreciate all the efforts that went into involving the community. I'm
> always feeling guilty about not having been able to spend way more time on
> the strategic process than I did in all the various steps of the process -
> such rebut would be totally fair :).
>
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Katherine Maher 
> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and while
> I
> > haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work has been
> > continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into Phase 2, in
> > which our objective is to start thinking about how we make the strategic
> > direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's an opportunity
> to
> > create greater clarity about how we each understand the direction, how we
> > might set goals against it, what we may need to change to achieve these
> > goals, and how we can contribute -- as projects, communities, and
> > individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly update shortly but I wanted
> to
> > acknowledge the contributions in this thread first.
> >
> > I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed, agreed
> > again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have to scrap
> my
> > drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I dig the
> challenges
> > you all have put forward and appreciate the diversity of opinions. Some
> of
> > our differences stem from the unique contexts of the groups and
> individuals
> > responding and will result in differences in implementation in each
> > community. Other differences, such as questioning the very concept of
> > source credibility, will certainly require additional discussion. But
> > regardless of where we end up, it has been a delight to follow such a
> rich,
> > substantive conversation. This has been one of the best, and
> > most thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I
> > hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement
> > strategy process.
> >
> > A few more responses inline:
> >
> > 2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk :
> > >
> > > I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards, there
> > is
> > > too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I
> take
> > > away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of the free
> > > knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a service. We don't
> > > expect people to know about 'Wikipedia' in 10 years, but we do want
> that
> > > our work is being put to good use.
>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[Lodewijk]

Just trying to understand: this is the percentage change of a percentage?
Or the percentage change of the absolute retention?
(I would be particularly interested in the latter, as the former could be
muddied by successful efforts to have more people make a first contribution)

Lodewijk


On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Fæ  wrote:

> On 18 October 2017 at 18:32, Brian Wolff  wrote:
> > Fae wrote:
> >>Does the minus symbol in "-60.0%" mean anything? Being a retention
> >>percentage, I do not understand how it can be negative unless
> >>potential volunteers are getting rejected at the door before they can
> >>sign-up. Could that be corrected?
> >
> > My understanding is that this means that the rentention percentage was
> > 60% (or is it percentage points?) less than it was this time last
> > year.
> >
> > So its now 5%, but this time last year it was 12%.
> >
> > --
> > bawolff
>
> Ah, thanks for the clarification. I have a background as a
> mathematician, but that report with second-order numbers had me foxed.
>
> Now I think I understand the stats, I probably correctly appreciate
> that whatever actions were taken in the last 12 months to retain
> volunteers were not "non-successes", they are super fantastic
> management team learning points for the coming year...
>
> Suggestion, throw away the current plan and rather than using findings
> to create incremental improvement,[1] try something completely
> different before all the wheels fall off. I look forward to seeing
> some serious radical initiatives.
>
> Links:
> 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Lodewijk]

Thanks for the response, Katherine. I'm a little concerned that we can have
such "vastly different" interpretations of the same text. I tried to get
some Wikimedians to give me their take-away, and have not gotten a
consistent direction from those.

What I mostly remember after reading your response is that Wikimedia would
be doing more of the same, and more.

This is a two-folded concern for me. On one hand, it feels like the
direction is too multi-interpretable. While vagueness and leaving specifics
open is only natural, I do believe that a clear direction is essential to
take the next steps.

Second, after reading your response I'm left with the feeling that we don't
really take a direction. Choosing a direction is also determining what not
to do. This was also a main criticism of the earlier version presented at
Wikimania. Directions are painful, because we're not satisfying everyone.

Currently, the WMF is asking people and affiliates to 'endorse' this text.
It has a high textual quality and says a number of things that resonate
with my ideals and those that I know to be Wikimedia's ideals. However, I
don't feel it provides the direction we need yet. I'm not keen on endorsing
a direction, which may then be interpreted in a vastly different way.

I should also note: I have little hope of changing the process. And it may
very well be that I'm alone in this concern. But I would suggest that you
(plural) select 25 (or more) random Wikimedians that were not intimately
involved with the strategic process, let them read the direction, and let
them summarize their take-aways. (that is working from the assumption you
have not done so already) If their variance is too large, that may be an
indicator that unfortunately another cycle of labor may be needed before we
can enter the next round. Given all effort and resources that have been
invested in this process, such sanity check may be worth while.

Warmly,

Lodewijk

ps: just to state the obvious: I'm highly appreciative of all the work that
went into this. It could have turned out worse in many many ways, and I
appreciate all the efforts that went into involving the community. I'm
always feeling guilty about not having been able to spend way more time on
the strategic process than I did in all the various steps of the process -
such rebut would be totally fair :).

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Katherine Maher 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and while I
> haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work has been
> continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into Phase 2, in
> which our objective is to start thinking about how we make the strategic
> direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's an opportunity to
> create greater clarity about how we each understand the direction, how we
> might set goals against it, what we may need to change to achieve these
> goals, and how we can contribute -- as projects, communities, and
> individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly update shortly but I wanted to
> acknowledge the contributions in this thread first.
>
> I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed, agreed
> again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have to scrap my
> drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I dig the challenges
> you all have put forward and appreciate the diversity of opinions. Some of
> our differences stem from the unique contexts of the groups and individuals
> responding and will result in differences in implementation in each
> community. Other differences, such as questioning the very concept of
> source credibility, will certainly require additional discussion. But
> regardless of where we end up, it has been a delight to follow such a rich,
> substantive conversation. This has been one of the best, and
> most thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I
> hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement
> strategy process.
>
> A few more responses inline:
>
> 2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk :
> >
> > I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards, there
> is
> > too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I take
> > away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of the free
> > knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a service. We don't
> > expect people to know about 'Wikipedia' in 10 years, but we do want that
> > our work is being put to good use.
>
> It's always helpful to read critique as a challenge to our logical
> assumptions. Lodewijk, I see where your interpretation comes from here, but
> it is vastly different than how I interpret from this statement. To the
> contrary, I wouldn’t say "service" and "brand" are mutually exclusive. I do
> think that Wikimedia should want to continue to be known as a destination
> for free knowledge, and we do want to increase brand

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The other side of the crisis at WMFR

[Joseph Seddon]

I must echo Lodewijk's words.

Washing dirty linen in public is beneficial to no one and damages everyone
involved including those making the accusations. There will be and are
lessons to be learned but right now there is a huge chilling effect from
the presence of lawyers on many sides and there is nothing to be gained
from this thread. There are proper avenues to deal with this, and if you
deem them appropriate then use hem, but this place is not one of those
avenues.

Regards
Seddon

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 6:18 PM, Lodewijk 
wrote:

> While this topic is painful and important, I don't have the feeling any
> progress is being made by continuing this tirade on this mailing list.
>
> I can see that hiring lawyers to investigate, will (at least in my culture)
> always have a whiff of subjectivity. Even though this seems (from what I
> understand) to be the default approach in the US, which is the primary
> context in which the WMF operates. I would like to emphasize one sentence
> in Katherine's email: "the Foundation remains fully committed to reviewing
> and investigating additional information, if presented, of sexual or other
> harassment allegedly committed by any Wikimedia Foundation staff or board
> member. " This sounds to me as an invitation to the plaintiffs (*) to
> request to reopen the investigation and present further testimony and
> evidence. For obvious privacy concerns, I imagine this won't happen in
> public. I hope that they will make use of this offer.
>
> What I don't see however, is what the alternate pathway is that the
> plaintiffs have in mind. It is suggested that this is a complaint that has
> been filed with the judicial system in France, which makes it even harder
> for anyone involved to publicly comment (while I'm not legally schooled, I
> suspect that any lawyer would probably advise against it). Therefore, I
> don't have the impression that continuing the very personal discussion
> about individuals without offering an alternative pathway is particularly
> helpful - especially as we don't even know in detail what the allegations
> are (a crucial piece of context). I'm even more concerned where discussions
> start to be held through the media (although I'm not sure I misunderstood
> that part).
>
> The plaintiffs have however also mentioned that the general climate should
> be improved. That seems a topic where public conversations can actually be
> helpful. I don't have a shred of doubt that there was a toxic climate in
> Wikimedia France. Both parties accuse each other for being responsible for
> that. What I would be more interested in, is what you as the WMFR
> community, or we as the international community, could have done to
> de-escalate that situation much earlier. This is not the first conflict
> situation in our movement, and I fear it'll be the last.
>
> When the dust has settled a bit, I would be in favor of asking (a subset
> of) the Affiliations Committee to look into the situation (and perhaps
> similar conflicts in other communities that were less visible), and come
> with some recommendations. This will probably not be very satisfactory for
> the involved parties where it comes to 'justice being done' - but it may
> help avoid more pain in the future.
>
> With a sad heart,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> (*) The reason I'm not mentioning people by name is not because I don't
> respect them, but because I don't necessarily want this thread to turn up
> in search results for eternity. I imagine others may have similar good
> faith reasons.
>
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 8:21 AM, Frans Grijzenhout 
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Remi, You're mail is one big complaint, may I remind you to the last
> > phrase of your Board Handbook? It states: Fortes capacité
> d’auto-évaluation
> > ​ (​Strong self-assessment capability). Thank you, Frans
> >
> >
> > *Frans Grijzenhout*, voorzitter / chair
> > +31 6 5333 9499
> > --
> > *Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland*
> > Mariaplaats 3  -  3511 LH Utrecht
> > Kamer van Koophandel 17189036
> > http://www.wikimedia.nl/
> >
> > 2017-10-20 13:49 GMT+02:00 Rémi Mathis :
> >
> > > Katherine,
> > >
> > > I told you a month ago "Maybe you should reply as a responsible human
> > being
> > > and not as a trained crisis communication people". This is truer
> > everyday.
> > >
> > > What did you write this email yesterday, and not one,two, three months
> > ago?
> > > Because I left Wikimedia France, because a Fields Medallist left,
> because
> > > the president of Picasso Museum left, and because journalists began to
> > talk
> > > about the harassment and the violence of some members of the community.
> > > Because the fact that Nathalie Martin had filed a complaint against
> > > Christophe Henner begins to spread not only amongst the community but
> > also
> > > outside.
> > > Because the articles made people aware of the problem and that they are
> > > victims too, and new testimonies are being sent to journalists.
> > > Because you met Christophe Henner in person th

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The other side of the crisis at WMFR

[Lodewijk]

While this topic is painful and important, I don't have the feeling any
progress is being made by continuing this tirade on this mailing list.

I can see that hiring lawyers to investigate, will (at least in my culture)
always have a whiff of subjectivity. Even though this seems (from what I
understand) to be the default approach in the US, which is the primary
context in which the WMF operates. I would like to emphasize one sentence
in Katherine's email: "the Foundation remains fully committed to reviewing
and investigating additional information, if presented, of sexual or other
harassment allegedly committed by any Wikimedia Foundation staff or board
member. " This sounds to me as an invitation to the plaintiffs (*) to
request to reopen the investigation and present further testimony and
evidence. For obvious privacy concerns, I imagine this won't happen in
public. I hope that they will make use of this offer.

What I don't see however, is what the alternate pathway is that the
plaintiffs have in mind. It is suggested that this is a complaint that has
been filed with the judicial system in France, which makes it even harder
for anyone involved to publicly comment (while I'm not legally schooled, I
suspect that any lawyer would probably advise against it). Therefore, I
don't have the impression that continuing the very personal discussion
about individuals without offering an alternative pathway is particularly
helpful - especially as we don't even know in detail what the allegations
are (a crucial piece of context). I'm even more concerned where discussions
start to be held through the media (although I'm not sure I misunderstood
that part).

The plaintiffs have however also mentioned that the general climate should
be improved. That seems a topic where public conversations can actually be
helpful. I don't have a shred of doubt that there was a toxic climate in
Wikimedia France. Both parties accuse each other for being responsible for
that. What I would be more interested in, is what you as the WMFR
community, or we as the international community, could have done to
de-escalate that situation much earlier. This is not the first conflict
situation in our movement, and I fear it'll be the last.

When the dust has settled a bit, I would be in favor of asking (a subset
of) the Affiliations Committee to look into the situation (and perhaps
similar conflicts in other communities that were less visible), and come
with some recommendations. This will probably not be very satisfactory for
the involved parties where it comes to 'justice being done' - but it may
help avoid more pain in the future.

With a sad heart,

Lodewijk

(*) The reason I'm not mentioning people by name is not because I don't
respect them, but because I don't necessarily want this thread to turn up
in search results for eternity. I imagine others may have similar good
faith reasons.

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 8:21 AM, Frans Grijzenhout 
wrote:

> Hi Remi, You're mail is one big complaint, may I remind you to the last
> phrase of your Board Handbook? It states: Fortes capacité d’auto-évaluation
> ​ (​Strong self-assessment capability). Thank you, Frans
>
>
> *Frans Grijzenhout*, voorzitter / chair
> +31 6 5333 9499
> --
> *Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland*
> Mariaplaats 3  -  3511 LH Utrecht
> Kamer van Koophandel 17189036
> http://www.wikimedia.nl/
>
> 2017-10-20 13:49 GMT+02:00 Rémi Mathis :
>
> > Katherine,
> >
> > I told you a month ago "Maybe you should reply as a responsible human
> being
> > and not as a trained crisis communication people". This is truer
> everyday.
> >
> > What did you write this email yesterday, and not one,two, three months
> ago?
> > Because I left Wikimedia France, because a Fields Medallist left, because
> > the president of Picasso Museum left, and because journalists began to
> talk
> > about the harassment and the violence of some members of the community.
> > Because the fact that Nathalie Martin had filed a complaint against
> > Christophe Henner begins to spread not only amongst the community but
> also
> > outside.
> > Because the articles made people aware of the problem and that they are
> > victims too, and new testimonies are being sent to journalists.
> > Because you met Christophe Henner in person the day before.
> >
> > Because you are doing your job to protect your boss and make as little
> > noise as possible. But when I donate to Wikimedia, when I edit Wikipedia,
> > that's not what I want from you. I want a safe community.
> >
> > I wrote to you, Christophe and your team more than ten times between July
> > and today. I even met your Legal Conselor and Christophe Henner to talk
> > about the harassment. I never got an email back from you. Not a single
> word
> > to a private message I sent. You only answered once on Twitter, because
> it
> > was a public conversation.
> >
> > Now, I'm for you "an individual", you never only *say my name*.
> > At the same time, I receive a letter from Henner's lawyer

Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Katherine Maher]

Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in chiming in. It's been a busy few weeks, and while I
haven't made a public update about strategy in a while, work has been
continuing! We've now closed Phase 1, and we're heading into Phase 2, in
which our objective is to start thinking about how we make the strategic
direction into a plan of action and implementation. It's an opportunity to
create greater clarity about how we each understand the direction, how we
might set goals against it, what we may need to change to achieve these
goals, and how we can contribute -- as projects, communities, and
individuals. I’ll be sending my next weekly update shortly but I wanted to
acknowledge the contributions in this thread first.

I've read through this entire thread, and I've agreed, disagreed, agreed
again, and started emails only to see new ones come in and have to scrap my
drafts. While I found myself often agreeing with Erik, I dig the challenges
you all have put forward and appreciate the diversity of opinions. Some of
our differences stem from the unique contexts of the groups and individuals
responding and will result in differences in implementation in each
community. Other differences, such as questioning the very concept of
source credibility, will certainly require additional discussion. But
regardless of where we end up, it has been a delight to follow such a rich,
substantive conversation. This has been one of the best, and
most thought-provoking, Wikimedia-l threads I've read in some time, and I
hope that it is the first of many as we go into Phase 2 of the movement
strategy process.

A few more responses inline:

2017-10-04 11:19 GMT-07:00 Lodewijk :
>
> I don't understand what exactly that direction is headed towards, there is
> too much space for a variety of interpretation. The one thing that I take
> away though, is that we won't place ourselves at the center of the free
> knowledge universe (as a brand), but want to become a service. We don't
> expect people to know about 'Wikipedia' in 10 years, but we do want that
> our work is being put to good use.

It's always helpful to read critique as a challenge to our logical
assumptions. Lodewijk, I see where your interpretation comes from here, but
it is vastly different than how I interpret from this statement. To the
contrary, I wouldn’t say "service" and "brand" are mutually exclusive. I do
think that Wikimedia should want to continue to be known as a destination
for free knowledge, and we do want to increase brand awareness, especially
in areas and contexts where we are not yet well (or not at all) known. Our
brand (including our communities) and visibility are some of our most
valuable assets as a movement, and it would be strategically unwise not to
build on them for long-term planning.

When I think about knowledge as a service, it means that we want this, *and
much more*. It’s additive. We want to be who we are today, *and* we want to
provide a service to other institutions. We want to use that brand and
visibility to work with others in the ecosystem. We also want to be present
in new experiences and delivery channels, in order to preserve the direct
interface connection with Wikipedia's contributors and readers that we have
on the web. I see this as essential - for our readers, it's about ensuring
a core promise: that the chain of evidence for the information they seek is
unbroken and transparent, from citation to edit. For our contributors, it's
about extending ways to contribute as our digital interfaces evolve.

We know from the Phase 1 research that many readers see Wikipedia as a
utility, whether we like it or not. We know that people reuse our content
in many contexts. My interpretation of “knowledge as a service” is not that
we vanish into the background, but that we become ever more essential to
people's lives. And part of our doing so is not only enriching the
experience people have on Wikipedia, but investing in how Wikipedia can
promote the opening of knowledge overall. Today, MediaWiki and Wikibase are
already infrastructures that serve other free knowledge projects, in turn
enriching the material on which our projects can draw. What more could we
do if we supported openness more systemically?

I understand that the direction may still feel too vague. A direction for
the 2030 horizon is bound to lack specifics. I actually think this is okay.
The direction comes from a small-ish group of drafters trying to make sense
of 8 months of thousands of perspectives. In that sense, a small group can
only do so much. It is now our responsibility, as movement actors, to take
this direction and interpret it in our respective contexts, based on our
respective experiences. This will be a major part of Phase 2 of the
movement discussions.

2017-10-09 17:44 GMT-07:00 Erik Moeller :
>
> With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
> worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you
> at least that the phrase "the essent

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The other side of the crisis at WMFR

[Frans Grijzenhout]

Hi Remi, You're mail is one big complaint, may I remind you to the last
phrase of your Board Handbook? It states: Fortes capacité d’auto-évaluation
​ (​Strong self-assessment capability). Thank you, Frans


*Frans Grijzenhout*, voorzitter / chair
+31 6 5333 9499
-- 
*Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland*
Mariaplaats 3  -  3511 LH Utrecht
Kamer van Koophandel 17189036
http://www.wikimedia.nl/

2017-10-20 13:49 GMT+02:00 Rémi Mathis :

> Katherine,
>
> I told you a month ago "Maybe you should reply as a responsible human being
> and not as a trained crisis communication people". This is truer everyday.
>
> What did you write this email yesterday, and not one,two, three months ago?
> Because I left Wikimedia France, because a Fields Medallist left, because
> the president of Picasso Museum left, and because journalists began to talk
> about the harassment and the violence of some members of the community.
> Because the fact that Nathalie Martin had filed a complaint against
> Christophe Henner begins to spread not only amongst the community but also
> outside.
> Because the articles made people aware of the problem and that they are
> victims too, and new testimonies are being sent to journalists.
> Because you met Christophe Henner in person the day before.
>
> Because you are doing your job to protect your boss and make as little
> noise as possible. But when I donate to Wikimedia, when I edit Wikipedia,
> that's not what I want from you. I want a safe community.
>
> I wrote to you, Christophe and your team more than ten times between July
> and today. I even met your Legal Conselor and Christophe Henner to talk
> about the harassment. I never got an email back from you. Not a single word
> to a private message I sent. You only answered once on Twitter, because it
> was a public conversation.
>
> Now, I'm for you "an individual", you never only *say my name*.
> At the same time, I receive a letter from Henner's lawyer trying to make me
> remove my post.
> Still keeping people quiet instead of accepting and therefore tackling the
> problems.
>
> I spent nine years working for the movement as a benevolent member. I have
> been chair for 3 years, I worked 9-12pm for the movement for years, I was
> threatened by the French Intelligence Service. And thanks to this
> dedication, I made a lot of friends ; I met a lot of extraordinay people ;
> we contracted with the Bibliothèque nationale, Versailles Palace,
> Ministries, etc. We made a huge and very good job.
>
> Now, do you really think I'm leaving with no reason? Do you really think
> I'm a liar or frivolous? Do you think I'm being manipulated by an evil
> witch we had to get rid of - as some say to journalists and some add (with
> neutrality of course) to the Wikipedia article about me?
>
> Denouncing the violence, I'm losing 30 of my closest friends, stopping one
> of my favouriste activities and canceling 9 years of my life.
>
> Sending an email like this one, "managing" instead of "caring", you only do
> the job you're getting paid for.
> But, maybe you also realise that you are shatterring lives of
> "individuals"... who have no names. But since we don't even have names,
> since there is no violence or harassment problem to deal with, I'm sure you
> will never have any problem to look at yourself in a mirror.
>
> Even Hollywood is facing the violence and harassment problem. Wikimedia
> still doesn't.
> I'm sad. But now I'm only sad for you and one of the greatest human
> projects of the time, you are currently making vile and foul.
> As for me, it's over.
>
> X, individual [used to be] associated with our movement
>
>
>
>
> On 19 October 2017 at 23:19, Katherine Maher  wrote:
>
> > Everyone,
> >
> > The past six months have been a complex and troubling time for our
> > community in France. Let me be absolutely clear, with no confusion or
> > ambiguity, that the Wikimedia Foundation condemns harassment. We take all
> > harassment claims seriously, investigate them promptly, and take the
> > appropriate action to enforce our policies whenever necessary. My goal
> here
> > today is to provide more information about the actions of the Wikimedia
> > Foundation, the principles to which we adhere, and the situation in which
> > our movement finds itself.
> >
> > As many of you know, there have been months of discussion within the
> French
> > Wikimedia community, independent committees and governance bodies, and
> the
> > Wikimedia Foundation about the governance and operations of Wikimédia
> > France. During this time, we have seen growing tensions between a number
> of
> > the former leaders of Wikimédia France and some members of the French
> > Wikimedia community. This situation created great strain on the French
> > community, former and current staff of Wikimédia France, and concerned
> > Wikimedia volunteers around the world. Much of this was documented by
> > community members[1] and in the press.[2] Over the past months the
> > Foundation has received formal a

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The other side of the crisis at WMFR

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 12:21 AM, Emeric VALLESPI  wrote:

> Katherine,
>
> [...]



> The lawyers you have appointed have been paid by the Foundation. They
> *only* interviewed the defendant.




Is this true? Because if what Emeric and Remi say is in fact true, it seems
inappropriate to characterise what happened as an "investigation". An
investigation listens to both sides.

If lawyers hear from one side only, that's called "seeking legal advice".
In other words, "We consulted a lawyer, and they advised us that the
allegations would not stand up in court."

More clarity on this would be appreciated. So, whom did, and didn't, the
expert French legal counsel appointed by the WMF interview?

Andreas





> In these conditions, how could the
> outcome not be favorable to his version?
>
> You did not answer any of my previous questions:
>
> Why did not the Wikimedia Foundation hear Nathalie Martin at her request?
> Just to have her version of the facts, it would have been - maybe ... - a
> good idea.
> Why did the experts who were supposed to conduct an adversarial
> investigation not discussed with Nathalie or Marie-Alice? Would not that
> have been the least of the things? Why did not they hear the board of
> trustees’ member? Why did you refuse to organize, as you (or your
> representatives) were offered, a confrontation between
> complainant/defendant?
> Why fear so much to hear the version of Nathalie?
>
> You have witnessed what Marie-Alice and Nathalie have experienced with
> social media as well as on the mailing-list you're hosting. You've done
> absolutely nothing to protect them.
> You're mentioning complaints that have been filed to the Support and Safety
> committee, which has no legal existence in the real world (outside of the
> movement). I am talking about real criminal complaints in a police station.
> Whether you can compare the two shows your total unconsciousness.
>
> Again, the role of the Wikimedia Foundation is not to determine whether the
> current Chair is guilty or innocent. Nor whether the acts are sexual or
> moral harassment.
> Your role, as an organization, is, to a minimum, to hear the victims and to
> ensure their protection. You have undertaken everything to mask this
> situation in order to guarantee your tranquility. It is a shame for a
> movement that wants to be humanistic.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Emeric Vallespi
>
> 2017-10-19 23:19 GMT+02:00 Katherine Maher :
>
> > Everyone,
> >
> > The past six months have been a complex and troubling time for our
> > community in France. Let me be absolutely clear, with no confusion or
> > ambiguity, that the Wikimedia Foundation condemns harassment. We take all
> > harassment claims seriously, investigate them promptly, and take the
> > appropriate action to enforce our policies whenever necessary. My goal
> here
> > today is to provide more information about the actions of the Wikimedia
> > Foundation, the principles to which we adhere, and the situation in which
> > our movement finds itself.
> >
> > As many of you know, there have been months of discussion within the
> French
> > Wikimedia community, independent committees and governance bodies, and
> the
> > Wikimedia Foundation about the governance and operations of Wikimédia
> > France. During this time, we have seen growing tensions between a number
> of
> > the former leaders of Wikimédia France and some members of the French
> > Wikimedia community. This situation created great strain on the French
> > community, former and current staff of Wikimédia France, and concerned
> > Wikimedia volunteers around the world. Much of this was documented by
> > community members[1] and in the press.[2] Over the past months the
> > Foundation has received formal and informal complaints alleging
> harassment
> > and other harmful behaviour, and we have enforced existing policies
> > whenever applicable.
> >
> > Recently, an individual associated with our movement published an essay
> > about the events in France on the blogging site Medium and shared that
> > essay with this list. It contained a number of deeply concerning
> > allegations of harassment. Let me first address the most troubling claims
> > of the recent essay—those regarding the Foundation’s handling of
> > allegations against the Wikimedia Foundation’s current Board Chair.
> >
> > In May of 2017 the Wikimedia Foundation was informed, in a letter and for
> > the first time, that the then-Executive Director of Wikimédia France was
> > alleging claims of harassment against the current Board Chair of the
> > Wikimedia Foundation, dating back to his tenure as former Chair of
> > Wikimédia France. In this letter the Executive Director described a
> number
> > of interactions with the Foundation’s Board Chair when he was Chair of
> > Wikimédia France, and went on to accuse him of using his position as
> > Foundation Board Chair to to turn the Wikimedia Foundation’s sentiment
> > against the French chapter.
> >
> > Contrary to the asse

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The other side of the crisis at WMFR

[Rémi Mathis]

Katherine,

I told you a month ago "Maybe you should reply as a responsible human being
and not as a trained crisis communication people". This is truer everyday.

What did you write this email yesterday, and not one,two, three months ago?
Because I left Wikimedia France, because a Fields Medallist left, because
the president of Picasso Museum left, and because journalists began to talk
about the harassment and the violence of some members of the community.
Because the fact that Nathalie Martin had filed a complaint against
Christophe Henner begins to spread not only amongst the community but also
outside.
Because the articles made people aware of the problem and that they are
victims too, and new testimonies are being sent to journalists.
Because you met Christophe Henner in person the day before.

Because you are doing your job to protect your boss and make as little
noise as possible. But when I donate to Wikimedia, when I edit Wikipedia,
that's not what I want from you. I want a safe community.

I wrote to you, Christophe and your team more than ten times between July
and today. I even met your Legal Conselor and Christophe Henner to talk
about the harassment. I never got an email back from you. Not a single word
to a private message I sent. You only answered once on Twitter, because it
was a public conversation.

Now, I'm for you "an individual", you never only *say my name*.
At the same time, I receive a letter from Henner's lawyer trying to make me
remove my post.
Still keeping people quiet instead of accepting and therefore tackling the
problems.

I spent nine years working for the movement as a benevolent member. I have
been chair for 3 years, I worked 9-12pm for the movement for years, I was
threatened by the French Intelligence Service. And thanks to this
dedication, I made a lot of friends ; I met a lot of extraordinay people ;
we contracted with the Bibliothèque nationale, Versailles Palace,
Ministries, etc. We made a huge and very good job.

Now, do you really think I'm leaving with no reason? Do you really think
I'm a liar or frivolous? Do you think I'm being manipulated by an evil
witch we had to get rid of - as some say to journalists and some add (with
neutrality of course) to the Wikipedia article about me?

Denouncing the violence, I'm losing 30 of my closest friends, stopping one
of my favouriste activities and canceling 9 years of my life.

Sending an email like this one, "managing" instead of "caring", you only do
the job you're getting paid for.
But, maybe you also realise that you are shatterring lives of
"individuals"... who have no names. But since we don't even have names,
since there is no violence or harassment problem to deal with, I'm sure you
will never have any problem to look at yourself in a mirror.

Even Hollywood is facing the violence and harassment problem. Wikimedia
still doesn't.
I'm sad. But now I'm only sad for you and one of the greatest human
projects of the time, you are currently making vile and foul.
As for me, it's over.

X, individual [used to be] associated with our movement




On 19 October 2017 at 23:19, Katherine Maher  wrote:

> Everyone,
>
> The past six months have been a complex and troubling time for our
> community in France. Let me be absolutely clear, with no confusion or
> ambiguity, that the Wikimedia Foundation condemns harassment. We take all
> harassment claims seriously, investigate them promptly, and take the
> appropriate action to enforce our policies whenever necessary. My goal here
> today is to provide more information about the actions of the Wikimedia
> Foundation, the principles to which we adhere, and the situation in which
> our movement finds itself.
>
> As many of you know, there have been months of discussion within the French
> Wikimedia community, independent committees and governance bodies, and the
> Wikimedia Foundation about the governance and operations of Wikimédia
> France. During this time, we have seen growing tensions between a number of
> the former leaders of Wikimédia France and some members of the French
> Wikimedia community. This situation created great strain on the French
> community, former and current staff of Wikimédia France, and concerned
> Wikimedia volunteers around the world. Much of this was documented by
> community members[1] and in the press.[2] Over the past months the
> Foundation has received formal and informal complaints alleging harassment
> and other harmful behaviour, and we have enforced existing policies
> whenever applicable.
>
> Recently, an individual associated with our movement published an essay
> about the events in France on the blogging site Medium and shared that
> essay with this list. It contained a number of deeply concerning
> allegations of harassment. Let me first address the most troubling claims
> of the recent essay—those regarding the Foundation’s handling of
> allegations against the Wikimedia Foundation’s current Board Chair.
>
> In May of 2017 the Wikimedia Fo

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmfall] New Developers Quarterly Report's first edition

[Quim Gil]

Hi,

I am very happy to see that the New Developers Quarterly report is raising
some interest. Yes, there are important problems of sustainability in our
developer community that deserve attention.

On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 8:21 PM, Fæ  wrote:

> Suggestion, throw away the current plan and rather than using findings
> to create incremental improvement,[1] try something completely
> different before all the wheels fall off. I look forward to seeing
> some serious radical initiatives.
>

The good news is that we have done this already.  :)

The retention numbers for this quarter correspond to the newcomers who
landed between ~April-September 2016. We can expect there developers
attracted by our hackathons in Jerusalem and Esino Lario, and the
corresponding Google Summer of Code and Outreachy rounds. It was by that
time when the Technical Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation (who
co-organizes these activities with mentors and affiliates) was digging
beyond our apparent success, deeper into the problem of developer
retention. Then we started to think that we should focus on new developers,
even if that meant less focus for our more experienced technical
contributors.

Since then, we have radically changed our plans and we are experimenting in
various ways. You can find a comprehensive explanation in a blog post
published last week: How Technical Collaboration is bringing new developers
into the Wikimedia movement


Since we are discussing about new developers, let me also recommend you
another blog published just yesterday: Towards building an African
Wikimedia Developer Community

.

Wikimedia volunteers and affiliates, we welcome your ideas and involvement!
When our developer community grows, everybody benefits.

-- 
Quim Gil
Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
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[Wikimedia-l] Ideas re Development, Semantic Field coverage by Project Integration

[Steve Cooney]

Some ideas: 
* Add topical forums to Wikipedia, by a rough count around eighty different 
topics. The encyclopedia article (primarily the one in the current global 
common language of American English) is the central document which contains the 
facts around any particular issue, and forums serve not just as a centralized 
discussion place around the article, but serve as more general discussion 
places and a way of coordinating article development. Currently discussion 
about article development tends to be spread out across too many talk pages and 
WikiProject pages tend to be too development oriented. * Integrate Wiktionary 
and Wikidata entries in Wikipedia searches. As a technical idea where the 
problem is one of "'this particular data belongs in an encyclopedia, while this 
other nuancedly-different set belongs in a dictionary." Specifically dealing 
with Wiktionary and Wiktionary because together with Wikipedia these should 
cover the whole Semantic Field.* Similar to above: Clicking on links is like 
doing a specific search.. deliver similar Wikidata and Wiktionary entries at 
top in addition to going to article. Clicking on links has that pidgeon-holing 
problem as well, of this topic (a link is basically a search entry already 
filled-out for you). Solution.. show a little related metadata at the top, and 
as a consequence.. continued:* Formalize the way disambiguation links are 
handled. An approach to developing Wikipedia is simply covering all possible 
topics. Including Wiktionary and Wikidata entries in Wikipedia searches is a 
technical idea that helps develop these other two projects and also lets them 
and their different handling help Wikipedia build and integrate articles, and 
Wikidata allows the idea of including.. continued:* Categorical language to 
cover the whole Semantic Field of ideas (building a dictionary of ideas, in 
term and phrase forms, which formalize "talking generally"): Talking about a 
thing might receive suppression (from either or both governments in the World) 
because talking about a thing along would (or in some legalistic arguments 
"might") reveal secrets about people. But news and history still have to be 
documented based on a reporting of events, and talking categorically is a way 
to say what's going on without being "defaming," because we aren't being 
specific. * Update opinion/policy regarding Machine translation-transformation 
and its implementation. The idea of each language getting its own wiki was the 
open ended approach, and was successful even though it has had some drawbacks 
the other is using the big languages to receive users into more and more 
assisted arenas, where machine translation (contract with Army/Google) is 
mature enough to integrate into the editing and discussion form. * Political: 
Fortify against the slippery slope that lets defamation arguments receive 
automatic or near-automatic legal suppression. The standard cartoon is where 
the lawyers argue that something a nation state does in the way of a crime has 
to be suppressed from news and history "because" its of a "defamation" to the 
unelected or elected leaders.  The idea of "suppression" (was called 
"oversight," really..) as permissible gets to that issue much debated about 
what kind of world are we going to have.. does it have too much suppression in 
it, such that there are things which we are categorically forbidden from 
reporting, even though we in the United States and other non-monarchial regions 
do not live by an anti-democratic philosophy of government.
Steven Cooneyfrom 2002


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The other side of the crisis at WMFR

[Dan Rosenthal]

I think the broader point being that for any legal or criminal complaints,
the appropriate venue is the court system, not the Wikimedia-L mailing
list.

Dan Rosenthal

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 12:45 AM, James Salsman  wrote:

> > Legal threats are surely the universal language of bad faith
>
> That assumes that legal threats are never legitimate. If there are
> criminal allegations of which the Foundation has not yet been made
> aware, they should be emailed to the appropriate officials and role
> accounts. Abuse of process is the bad faith subset.
>
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 7:06 AM, Gabriel Thullen 
> wrote:
> > Thank you Katherine for your long and thoughtful message on this
> difficult
> > subject. I feel that the Foundation took the necessary steps to ensure
> that
> > all parties concerned were treated fairly. I also tend to trust the
> > Foundation board when they say that there was "no merit to the charges".
> >
> > This appears to be a classic case of "claims and counter claims" which
> the
> > Foundation has settled. Now that the smoke screen has been cleared, we
> now
> > need to address the other issues that are plaguing Wikimedia France.
> >
> > Once again, thank you for setting the record straight in such a calm and
> > measured fashion. I sincerely hope that we will now be able to answer our
> > member's grievances and get to the bottom of this mess, with the
> > Foundation's help, experience and guidance,
> >
> > Best regards
> > Gabriel
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 3:56 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> >
> >> On Oct 19, 2017 7:41 PM, "Richard Farmbrough"  >
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> I think it very clear that these allegations were the last gasp of an
> >> ancient regime,
> >>
> >>
> >> Legal threats are surely the universal language of bad faith.  And I
> have
> >> complete trust in Pierre-Selim and Caroline.
> >>
> >> Thanks Katherine, for sharing details of what has been happening.
> >>
> >> Sam.
> >> ___
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> >> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> >> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> >> 
> >>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[James Salsman]

Erik,

Should interactive web, internet of things, or offline services
relying on Foundation encyclopedia CC-BY-SA content be required to
attribute authorship by specifying the revision date from which the
transluded content is derived?

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 7:01 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
>> Wikidata has its own problems in that regard that have triggered ongoing
>> discussions and concerns on the English Wikipedia.[1]
>
> Tensions between different communities with overlapping but
> non-identical objectives are unavoidable. Repository projects like
> Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons provide huge payoff: they dramatically
> reduce duplication of effort, enable small language communities to
> benefit from the work done internationally, and can tackle a more
> expansive scope than the immediate needs of existing projects. A few
> examples include:
>
> - Wiki Loves Monuments, recognized as the world's largest photo competition
> - Partnerships with countless galleries, libraries, archives, and museums
> - Wikidata initiatives like mySociety's "Everypolitician" project or Gene Wiki
>
> This is not without its costs, however. Differing policies, levels of
> maturity, and social expectations will always fuel some level of
> conflict, and the repository approach creates huge usability
> challenges. The latter is also true for internal wiki features like
> templates, which shift information out of the article space,
> disempowering users who no longer understand how the whole is
> constructed from its parts.
>
> I would call these usability and "legibility" issues the single
> biggest challenge in the development of Wikidata, Structured Data for
> Commons, and other repository functionality. Much related work has
> already been done or is ticketed in Phabricator, such as the effective
> propagation of changes into watchlists, article histories, and
> notifications. Much more will need to follow.
>
> With regard to the issue of citations, it's worth noting that it's
> already possible to _conditionally_ load data from Wikidata, excluding
> information that is unsourced or only sourced circularly (i.e. to
> Wikipedia itself). [1] Template invocations can also override values
> provided by Wikidata, for example, if there is a source, but it is not
> considered reliable by the standards of a specific project.
>
>> If a digital voice assistant propagates a Wikimedia mistake without telling
>> users where it got its information from, then there is not even a feedback
>> form. Editability is of no help at all if people can't find the source.
>
> I'm in favor of always indicating at least provenance (something like
> "Here's a quote from Wikipedia:"), even for short excerpts, and I
> certainly think WMF and chapters can advocate for this practice.
> However, where short excerpts are concerned, it's not at all clear
> that there is a _legal_ issue here, and that full compliance with all
> requirements of the license is a reasonable "ask".
>
> Bing's search result page manages a decent compromise, I think: it
> shows excerpts from Wikipedia clearly labeled as such, and it links to
> the CC-BY-SA license if you expand the excerpt, e.g.:
> https://www.bing.com/search?q=france
>
> I know that over the years, many efforts have been undertaken to
> document best practices for re-use, ranging from local
> community-created pages to chapter guides and tools like the
> "Lizenzhinweisgenerator". I don't know what the best-available of
> these is nowadays, but if none exists, it might be a good idea to
> develop a new, comprehensive guide that takes into account voice
> applications, tabular data, and so on.
>
> Such a guide would ideally not just be written from a license
> compliance perspective, but also include recommendations, e.g., on how
> to best indicate provenance, distinguishing "here's what you must do"
> from "here's what we recommend".
>
>>> Wikidata will often provide a shallow first level of information about
>>> a subject, while other linked sources provide deeper information. The
>>> more structured the information, the easier it becomes to validate in
>>> an automatic fashion that, for example, the subset of country
>>> population time series data represented in Wikidata is an accurate
>>> representation of the source material. Even when a large source
>>> dataset is mirrored by Wikimedia (for low-latency visualization, say),
>>> you can hash it, digitally sign it, and restrict modifiability of
>>> copies.
>
>> Interesting, though I'm not aware of that being done at present.
>
> At present, Wikidata allows users to model constraints on internal
> data validity. These constraints are used for regularly generated
> database reports as well as on-demand lookup via
> https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:ConstraintReport . This kicks
> in, for example, if you put in an insane number in a population field,
> or mark a country as female.
>
> There is a project un

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The other side of the crisis at WMFR

[James Salsman]

> Legal threats are surely the universal language of bad faith

That assumes that legal threats are never legitimate. If there are
criminal allegations of which the Foundation has not yet been made
aware, they should be emailed to the appropriate officials and role
accounts. Abuse of process is the bad faith subset.

On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 7:06 AM, Gabriel Thullen  wrote:
> Thank you Katherine for your long and thoughtful message on this difficult
> subject. I feel that the Foundation took the necessary steps to ensure that
> all parties concerned were treated fairly. I also tend to trust the
> Foundation board when they say that there was "no merit to the charges".
>
> This appears to be a classic case of "claims and counter claims" which the
> Foundation has settled. Now that the smoke screen has been cleared, we now
> need to address the other issues that are plaguing Wikimedia France.
>
> Once again, thank you for setting the record straight in such a calm and
> measured fashion. I sincerely hope that we will now be able to answer our
> member's grievances and get to the bottom of this mess, with the
> Foundation's help, experience and guidance,
>
> Best regards
> Gabriel
>
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 3:56 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>
>> On Oct 19, 2017 7:41 PM, "Richard Farmbrough" 
>> wrote:
>>
>> I think it very clear that these allegations were the last gasp of an
>> ancient regime,
>>
>>
>> Legal threats are surely the universal language of bad faith.  And I have
>> complete trust in Pierre-Selim and Caroline.
>>
>> Thanks Katherine, for sharing details of what has been happening.
>>
>> Sam.
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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>> wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>> 
>>
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> 

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